David Mason walked across Australia because no-one else had done it. He did it on is own with no support crew. After his experiences in the French Foreign Legion it was at once a challenge and a way to reconnect with life, people and Australia. In taking on the challenge he sought to raise funds for the Fred Hollows Foundation. David sought to demonstrate that in taking on challenges we live, rather than taking the easy way out and instead, live lives of quiet desperation. David was the first person to walk across Australia at its widest point. In the course of that expedition he also was the first recorded person to walk solo east-west across the Simpson Desert and its 1100 dunes. For this achievement he was named Australia's Adventurer of the Year and awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Geographic Society. Views: 29
Hector Mortlake and his valet Cuthbert are off on their second adventure when a book-signing tour of the States turns into a deadly race to Mexico in order to prevent a dangerous ritual that would resurrect the Aztec deity Xolotl and bring about the destruction of civilisation as we know it. Fast-moving and funny, this sequel to Kiss Of The Water Nymph will entertain fans of derring-do and innuendo. Views: 29
90-year-old General Fentiman was definitely dead, but no one knew exactly when he had died — and the time of death was the determining factor in a half-million-pound inheritance.Lord Peter Wimsey would need every bit of his amazing skills to unravel the mysteries of why the General's lapel was without a red poppy on Armistice Day, how the club's telephone was fixed without a repairman, and, most puzzling of all, why the great man's knee swung freely when the rest of him was stiff with rigor mortis. Views: 29
Stay follows Abbey, a young woman from Canada now living in a village outside Galway. She falls in love with Dermot, an older Irish man, in an unconventional, affectionate but troubled relationship. The extraordinary skill of Stay lies in its unsentimental depiction of modern Ireland. The inhabitants of Dermot's village form a riotous and poignant chorus, commenting on their rapidly changing world with wit and insight. Here is a beautiful, funny and richly rewarding novel about history and obligation, and above all, the meaning of human connection in a land poised uneasily between past and present.Review• "For all the complexity in Hunter's book . . . there is also a minute attention to detail and an elegance in the natural dialogue. Hunter heaps ideas on you, ideas you want to stop and think about, in such a subtle, tender way that you never feel assaulted, but rather protected." --The Globe and Mail • "Hunter has created a redolent, peat-reeking sense of Ireland, mournful but sometimes blackly hilarious. . . . The smell of life is what makes Stay so compelling." --Vancouver SunAbout the AuthorAISLINN HUNTER's acclaimed collection of stories, What's Left Us, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and the ReLit Prize. Her masterful poetry collection, Into the Early Hours, was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize and won the Gerald Lampert Award. Views: 29
Gertrude Stein wanted Ida to be known in two ways: as a novel about a woman in the age of celebrity culture and as a text with its own story to tell. With the publication of this workshop edition of Ida, we have the novel exactly as it was published in 1941, and we also have the full record of its creation. Logan Esdale offers informative critical commentary and judiciously selected archival materials to illuminate Stein's experience of authorship from the novel's beginning in early summer 1937, through the various drafts and negotiations with her publisher, to the reviews that greeted the book's publication. Stein's careful and systematic preservation of all Ida-related materials for her archive at the Yale University Library was a conscious decision, and an invitation for us to study the complexity of her creative process. Ida, a character reportedly inspired by Wallis Simpson, the infamous Duchess of Windsor, is someone who becomes well known for being well known. In the novel, a mature Stein explores the significance of being well known to others and the effect that has on where we live and who we love. She offers an engaging picture of Ida's adventures in the world of identity, as well as a fascinating reflection on her own career as a famous personality.Review"Esdale’s innovative approach results in an enriching contribution to Stein scholarship. [...] Highly recommended." – Linda Simon, Choice"Stein constructs a cubist portrait or skewed biography of Ida [and her] contradictory desires—wanting a home, needing to escape; wanting to be known and not. [...] [T]here’s a bounty of tension and release [and] [r]elease from textual and narrative tension comes, in part, through Stein’s remarkable voice. [...] The editor, Logan Esdale, has written an excellent introduction (and notes throughout) containing necessary biographical and textual information." — Lynne Tillman, The New York Times Book Review“The strangest book I read [when I was young] was Ida, by Gertrude Stein, which my mom gave to me without much fanfare. This must have been when I was in high school. It’s an odd book, with a telescoping narrator and that new-brain prose of Stein’s. My first encounter with very simple sentences looted of sense. I loved it.” — Ben Marcus, weirdfictionreview.com From the Back Cover"Step by difficult step Logan Esdale slowly entered Stein's domain where she alone had made decisions working on Ida, composing her novel and figuring out what to do with Ida and how. Esdale's book now becomes a handbook, a new approach to Stein scholarship, and authorship, based on Stein's own archive. He wanted to discover for himself and to show us how she worked as she did." -- Ulla Dydo, author of *Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises, 1923-1934*"For those brave souls who undertake to read and teach that strangest of short novels in British and American literature, Gertrude Stein's Ida, Logan Esdale's edition is the indispensable text. It is a major contribution to the scholarship and the interpretation of Gertrude Stein's literary art. Esdale brilliantly sets forth the history and the world of Ida, its universe of discourse. If only I'd had Esdale's text when I was supposing what Ida said." -- Neil Schmitz, author of Of Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Literature Views: 29
Tibble is a reporter. He only ever writes about cats, and he's about to be fired.Minou is a young woman who has moved into Tibble's flat. She hates dogs, likes rooftops, loves the fishmonger, and happens to have been, until very recently, a cat.With her feline friends listening out for all the local human news, is Minou the answer to all Tibble's problems-or just the beginning of them? A hilarious, charming story of cats, dogs, and learning to dare. Views: 29
"Kasischke's verses walk that perfect Plathian line between the everyday...and the eternal." —Time Magazine Views: 29
James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection.Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "History"—a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"—to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing... Views: 29
